English Pearlware Pottery Large Underglaze Blue Jug With Flowers and Drapery Circa 1820–1830

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Description

English Pearlware Pottery Large Underglaze Blue Jug with Flowers and Drapery
Circa 1820–1830

This large English pearlware jug is painted … Read more English Pearlware Pottery Large Underglaze Blue Jug with Flowers and Drapery
Circa 1820–1830

This large English pearlware jug is painted in underglaze blue with a loose spray of flowers on one side and a boldly stylized drapery swag on the other, two faces so different in spirit that the jug seems to belong to two traditions at once. The ovoid body rises to a straight-sided cylindrical collar with a broad, projecting pointed lip, and the crisply angular handle, with a spurred thumb rest at the top and a kicked lower terminal, is left in the white. The collar is painted all around with a staggered band of tapering blue drop strokes, and the cool, bluish-tinted glaze gathers faintly where the collar meets the shoulder.

The floral side carries a carnation, a many-petaled daisy-like flowerhead and a stylized bloom seen in profile, rising on slender stems among long, pointed leaves and curling tendrils, each element laid in with a few quick, confident strokes of the brush. The reverse is a striking contrast: a looped swag of drapery caught up at three points, its long ends falling at either side, with two small pendant drops and a central roundel painted with a fluted, patera-like motif. It is the neoclassical festoon of the late eighteenth century reduced to a handful of broad, free strokes, and it reads today as almost modernist in its economy.

Its broad, unhurried brushwork records the hand of an individual decorator at a time when transfer printing was fast becoming the standard for blue-and-white earthenware, and its generous size and sturdy form suggest a vessel in daily use in the kitchen or dining room, holding water, ale, or cider.

The two very different faces allow the jug to be turned to suit the setting: the floral side for a traditional kitchen, dresser, or country dining room, the pared-down drapery side for a more contemporary interior. Its size gives it presence on its own on a console, mantel, or open shelf, and it can equally be filled with garden flowers on a table.

Dimensions
Height: 8½ inches (21.6 cm)
Depth: 7½ inches (19.1 cm)
Length: 10¼ inches (26.0 cm), spout to handle

Marks
Unmarked.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Historical Context
Pearlware takes its name from the "Pearl White" ware Josiah Wedgwood introduced in 1779, although other Staffordshire potters had been making a similar cobalt-tinted "china glaze" earthenware since the mid-1770s. The small amount of cobalt in the lead glaze counteracted the creamy tone of the body beneath, giving a cooler, whiter surface that flattered underglaze blue. Supplies of cobalt were disrupted during the Napoleonic Wars, and blue painting gave way in part to polychrome palettes; after 1815 blue returned in force, and the painted patterns of the following fifteen years are marked by large, loose brushstrokes quite unlike the small, careful florals of earlier decades. Painted decoration in these years went chiefly onto teawares, larger hollowares more often being dipped, which makes a jug of this size, painted freehand, a less common survival.

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